On 11 October 1968, Walter Cunningham, who has died aged 90, and his fellow crew members, Wally Schirra and Donn Eisele, became the first astronauts to fly in an Apollo spacecraft. Cunningham was only the second American civilian in space – Neil Armstrong had been the first. Their vehicle was Apollo 7, which Cunningham regarded as providing the first of the five highly successful “giant steps” – Apollos 8, 9 and 10 provided the next three – that culminated, 10 months later, with Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, from Apollo 11, making the first moon landing.
The first Apollo mission, Apollo 1, had ended catastrophically in January 1967 when its three crew members were incinerated during a launchpad rehearsal, and the following missions were unmanned. But by October 1968, while the US was convulsed with anti-Vietnam war and civil rights protests, Apollo 7 was orbiting faultlessly some 187 miles above, and the astronauts were testing modules for the moon landing. However, Apollo 7 was not a happy ship. “The only thing that wasn’t working smoothly was the crew,” observed their fellow astronaut Tom Stafford.
Schirra, the commander, was a space veteran, and had announced before the Apollo 7 mission that he was planning to quit space travel. Then, as the voyage unfolded, Nasa’s formidable flight operations director Chris Kraft vowed that none of its crew would fly again. Cunningham said later he believed that “the entire Apollo 7 crew was tarred and feathered through the actions of Wally Schirra during those 11 days”.
Cunningham suggested that Schirra felt the burden of restoring confidence after Apollo 1. According to Stafford, Schirra became “more openly critical and sarcastic” and, once in orbit, attempted to assert his – rather than Mission Control’s – command over the voyage, including vetoing the timing of the first live TV space broadcast. Problems were exacerbated when, after a day, Schirra developed a heavy cold, which he passed on to Eisele. “We were up to our asses in used tissues,” recalled Cunningham. The commander, meanwhile, “didn’t miss an opportunity to nail Mission Control to the wall”.
Back on Earth, a journalist asked the flight director Glynn Lunney if the crew were a “bunch of malcontents”. Lunney replied that he would be “‘a little hard-pressed to answer that one”. Cunningham’s view was that the mission “left a bitter residue with the support people and the controllers”.
After Apollo 7, Cunningham moved to management on the first US space station, Skylab, which he regarded as his principal contribution to space flight. In 1971, he retired from Nasa, enrolled on Harvard’s advanced management programme, and after graduation embarked on a business career.
In 1977 his memoir, The All-American Boys, was published, covering his Nasa years. The Apollo 7 fracas had provided a fleeting glimpse of discord, but Cunningham’s book was a deeper insight into that curious culture which emerged around the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes, one of commitment, competition and fragmented lives. “No one knew,” he wrote, “what the astronauts stood for other than God, country and the space programme.”
Since the 1950s, Nasa had projected an image of open, clean-living heroes, white and male, soaring ever upwards. It jarred with reality. Cunningham had joined Nasa at Ellington air force base, near Houston, Texas, in January 1964 and soon after that, Schirra provided what Cunningham labelled a “cool it round the flagpole” lecture, which touched on good deals on Corvette sports cars (nevertheless Cunningham stuck with his Porsche), and warned of the many women “who just loved the astronauts”.
This did not make for stable marriages. The only thing bigger than astronauts’ egos, said Cunningham, was their wives’ sense of insecurity. As for openness, he had “rarely heard an astronaut either admit to his own problems, or say anything complimentary about his peers”. The aim was personal advancement, or, failing that, “move the other guy back”.
Cunningham was born in Creston, Iowa, the oldest of five children. The family moved to Venice, California, where he was educated at the local high school. His father, Walter, ran a cement contracting business, while his mother provided the ambition in the family. As a 10-year-old, watching the film Hell Divers, young Walt resolved to join the US navy air force.
Nine years on, having briefly studied architecture, Cunningham enrolled with the navy and in 1952 began flight training. The following year, he was commissioned into the Marine Corps – thus guaranteeing he would fly fighters. In 1956 he transferred to the USMC Reserve and began studying physics at the University of California Los Angeles, taking a BA with honours in 1959 and a master’s with distinction in 1961. He then divided his time between working on a doctorate at UCLA, employment with the Rand Corporation and, in October 1963, a successful application to Nasa.
In 1964 he supported the Republican Barry Goldwater – then seen as a radical rightwinger – in the presidential elections, and in later life he worked with the Heartland Institute, a climate change denial organisation, hosted Lift-off to Logic, a radio phone-in, and denounced “global warming alarmists” and their threat to the US economy.
Among his many honours, Cunningham shared an Emmy TV award in 1969 for Apollo 7’s space broadcasts. He was a recipient of Nasa’s distinguished and exceptional service medals. In 2007, he was inducted into the US astronauts’ hall of fame.
In 1956 he married LoElla Irby, and they had two children, Brian and Kimberley. The marriage ended in divorce and he is survived by his wife, Dot, and children.
• Ronnie Walter Cunningham, astronaut, born 16 March 1932; died 3 January 2023
• This article was amended on 4 January 2023. The heading of an earlier version incorrectly said that Apollo 7 was America’s first successful manned space mission.
